


Cure

by Lirendil



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Arachnophobia, Claustrophobia, Gen, Horror, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Sleep Paralysis, Torture, Trauma, just straight up horror, no assault or graphic violence, no blood or gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirendil/pseuds/Lirendil
Summary: When she was a girl, she had a fear of spiders.They made sure to fix that.





	Cure

**Author's Note:**

> Please DO NOT read this if you’re afraid of spiders or bugs, or are sensitive to anything in the tags. This is not the piece for you. These aren't generally triggers for me and I was still uncomfortable writing it.
> 
> Tread with caution.

She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here. All she knew were white lights and a strange voice…

And then _pain_.

Amélie heard cries leave her throat but whatever was inflicting it didn't stop - not for so, so long. Not until she heard footsteps pause next to her and a thoughtful hum.

The pain ebbed and she felt like she could breathe again.

“Amélie Lacroix.”

Amélie turned her head towards the newcomer although she couldn't make out much with her unfocused eyes. Everything was so confusing. Who were these people? Why was she here being treated like this? Nothing made any sense.

“Let… let me go.”

“Not yet.”

_Yet?_ The word blossomed the slightest shred of hope within her. But the person had not finished.

“You'll leave for a while, but your mind, who you are now will stay right here, in this room. We have far too many plans for you to let you abandon us. You belong to us now, and you always will.”

The words didn’t all register - she wasn't capable of grasping all that was being implied - but Amélie still sensed deep in her bones that it meant the end of her existence as she knew it. She felt her heart plummet, an urge for tears climb up her throat. She just wanted to go home. She wanted Gérard.

“What do you hate, Amélie?” the deceptively soft voice murmured. “What do you fear?”

“You.” It was true. They were hurting her. They had taken her away from the life, the people she loved. The answer was legitimate.

But it was also _safe_. Because they knew that. And any other answer was one more thing that could be weaponized against her.

“You’re no machine, my dear. Not yet. I need to know what troubles you. What makes you lie awake at night. What made you quiver as a child. Because we need to fix that, Amélie.” Each use of her given name chafed at her, made her stomach turn at the false sympathy. “We want to make you better than you’ve ever been and you need to let go of your weaknesses in order to do so. We’re just helping you along.”

“I don’t want your _help_.” It was getting difficult to form words, thoughts even. But she was still clutching those threads of coherence as fiercely as she could.

“You have no purpose.” The voice was growing cold. “You dance for a few people, you’re married to a man who has the audacity to sabotage our work - our _progress_ in this world. If you died right here you would be meaningless. But if you lived… now there is where your potential lies. It will be so much easier if you accept to seek it out yourself.”

“I don't… I…”

The voice continued over her weakening words. “The human body possesses amazing potential that few, if any in this world, have fully realized. The only way to draw it out is to push its limits. Oh, the trials that a body can endure are beyond your wildest dreams. But they won’t be beyond you for long.”

She had no more strength to reply.

First came the darkness, the emptiness that enveloped her for what felt like days. Then it was the tiny closet they shoved her into with hardly enough space to move or breathe. They paralyzed her in semi-consciousness and visions of horrible creatures loomed over her that could have been her own hallucinations as much as their projections. For all she knew, they had opened the gates of hell itself. They clinically went down their list of terrors just to see what clicked and with every passing day of both physical and psychological strain, Amélie felt her sanity slip that much more.

And then came the spiders.

She had tried her best not to react, but perhaps that had only made them realize sooner what they had discovered. The years had slowly taught her how to remain calm for as long as possible so that she didn’t always respond with the panic she had felt as a child.

But after that restraint broke, it was chaos.

They were images initially. Holograms. Then a small spider or two they let wander into a corner of the room. Then there were more, weaving their silky webs across the ceiling. They became larger. She tried to keep them away, but then there were simply too many. She lost count. They crowded her. Poking at her. Crawling on her. The webs grew thick. She felt them cling to her hair, felt her back shiver from the tiny legs that overran her entirely. She hunched over with her head and arms squeezed into herself, trying to keep as little of herself as possible bared to the beasts around her.

“We’re making you better, remember?”

Amélie could hardly register the words as she felt gloved hands pick her up. She whimpered, cracking her eyes open to the closed door that promised safety, reprieve.

They pushed her to the floor.

Something locked around her wrists.

Her ankles.

Her vision was obscured for a moment and she felt something cold clamp around her eyelids. She tried to blink away the brightness of the overhead light.

She couldn’t.

She couldn’t _blink._

The door opened. Closed. The room was silent again.

But then she heard the rustling. The tiniest sound multiplied until she realized that it was those webs being woven all over again. Spiders dangled from the ceiling above her. They fell. They walked the floor, _she couldn’t move_ , her legs, _she couldn’t close her eyes she could only watch_ , her fingers her arms _stop_ her neck _please_ her face she _couldn’t move_ she-

Screamed.

She screamed and no one came.

She screamed until she felt those legs on her lips and she pressed them together, couldn’t afford to scream, no, she cried, she fell apart, her mind cracked and she was left as blank as the thick white layer of silk that enrobed her.

She had been silent a long time when they finally carried her out of the room, and she would remain silent for a long time thereafter. Her eyes stayed wide open even once they could close again and she didn’t curl in on herself when they set her down and left her alone. She had seen all that she could. There was nothing left that her mind would want to shield itself against. There was nothing left in her mind at all.

“Do you remember them?” the voice crooned. “Dancing above you while you lay petrified, devouring each other until only the strongest were left standing? That will be you. You will become our spider, our widow. Our widow _maker_. You will feed on the weak to live and it will make you feel so _alive_. I promise.”

And that voice delivered.

One day soon, she would eliminate the last link to her old, meaningless life so that she could abandon it forever. Another day later on she would aim and fire and feel the slightest, barest thrill ripple through her at the beauty, the power of it.

But most of all?

She was never afraid of spiders again.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why it took me so long to wonder what had changed Amélie's mind with her monologue from Alive, what had driven her to fixate on and turn into her own childhood fear. Well, here we are.


End file.
